pandemonium
by an6st
Summary: HHr/DHr. "Blood is on your tongue as well as your hands."
1. smoke

He is conflicted. She always comes by his house and force herself within his reach, but she cannot. He locks the door when he hears her car door slam outside his house. When she climbs the fragile, wooden stairs to his home, he goes into his room, and she will hear the door shut close. The sound always echoes throughout the godforsaken neighborhood, waking the smell of death and his self-deprecation. The atmosphere, cold and unforgiving, is ofttimes irenic, but his mind works in a caliginous and assorted structure.

Regardless of their situation, she never gives up. In every conscious day and per lidless night, she parks her car in front of his house. And everyday, the spot between the lamp post and the mailbox of his home is inhabited by her unpredictable sojourn. She will ascend the dying strength of the stairs that leads to his front porch and sit, waiting for the suspiration that escapes his pallid lips and the thundering sound of his strides as he approaches the smirch next to her sylphlike soma. They would sit in silence, then she will twist her head, reaching over her bag and take out a box of cigarettes.

He appresses his eyes when he inhales the familiar scent of smoke and her perfume. It is ever the vanilla one she wears, and he wonders if he can taste the skin around her bones and finally come to a conclusion.

She is seated outside his porch now. She had came out of her car carrying a paper bag. He guessed that it was food, seeing as she had been eating on her way out. She is nearly polished on her part of their unspoken routine, and he knows that he should do his, to obviate her incessant sounding on his threshold. He can't afford to buy a new one.

He can't afford to let her in.

She gives him a once-over when he finally walks out of his shadowy house, not smiling-not even a lour, but her warm amber eyes told him a different story. She curtly nods at his attendance, and he squats to his knees and lands on his behind with a soft thud. A vellication of her lips breaks the facade she was displaying, and she turns to the spot he occupies, drinking him in.

They take a long look at each other. Her tepid, bright amber eyes and his cold, dark gray ones are an austere contrast from a different perspective, but both know that they are analogous; they are utterly inanimate.

She let her arms fall behind her, and her hands rest on the dusty cement. She leans back, moving quietly to not ruin the serene silence that surrounds them. She eyes the purple sky hastily as her thoughts allowed her mind to swim in her head, splashing into the emptiness, engulfed by her tortured mentation. An asphyxiating suspiration loosens from her lungs, slicing through the mass of dense ambiance.

Then, she turns. Twisting her body to reach her battered, ebony bag between her unclean, decrepit, achromatic boots. He awaits the well-known, cerulean box and she takes out two cigarettes. She stretches her arm and hands him one.

The glare he gives her is toxic, but she is used to his life-threatening expressions that she only shrugs it off. Returning the rejected cigarette, she alights the tip of her own with a lighter and breathes in the phytotoxin of the stick. He watches with apparent, yet chained enchantment at the visibility of her relief as the smoke paints a picture in the air.

She slenderly smiles at his exuberance. The one he fails to cover every single time.

He bends down and snatches her bag, taking out the cerulean box and unveils the lid. He picks his desired coffin nail and lights it instantly, taking a curt drag of his own.

When the absence of noise finally returns to haunt them both, he absentmindedly holds her hand and sees the tears fall on her cheeks.


	2. blind

The sun hasn't risen as far as she can remember.

Faint was the light of the moon in every passing hour that comes by. And its iridescence is fading like a snail that attempts to reach the finish line. The ray is growing fainter, duller as was the fire in her soul; extinguished by an anonymous abstract. And blind was she, whose eyes are covered by cloth. Detached from the truth that haunts Heaven and Hell, for she continues to wander in the jungle of life, where the path is desolate and extracted from the knowledge of humanity; and yet, she follows the trail - a trail that she, herself, does not know.

"Granger." He whispers, his quiet voice pierced through the silence of the night, and she cannot decide if it was a good thing or not; for the silence is ineffable and loud in her ears. The screams that come from a variety of names, voices, _people_ oppose the darkness of the night and the brightness of the day.

Neverending. Exhaustive.

Her hands. They seem warm in her gaze, and she clasps them together before promptly detaching them from each other. She sees the red pound beneath her brown skin, begging to be let out. Lingers for awhile, before throwing away the hope that shone for a moment and died in the end, once again.

 _Cold._

She tilts her head to his direction. "Fancy seeing you here, Malfoy."

The castle is rundown. The stench of blood and disembodied parts are littered everywhere. A hand rests on the filthy ground in front of her. A ring, with a capitalized M encircled one of the fingers, and she smiles a little.

Blood is everywhere. Underneath her chipped, unclean fingernails and between her teeth. The taste is glorious, and she feels as though her side of the war had won.

 _He looks back at you one last time, his green eyes sparkling even as the emerald light hits his chest. His shattered spectacles are insignificant when his body hits the ground and immediately turns into dust, into ashes. And you watch, you can_ only _watch, because he was Harry Potter-The Boy Who Lived, now dead, and you couldn't save him because he had to fulfill his duty and now he is gone._

"Oh, and why is that?"

Ron is lying down on the crumbled step of something that once were stairs. With his wand pointed up, he looks like he is merely drawing invisible shapes with his wand. Hermione almost giggles at her best friend's incredulousness, eyeing his familiar red hair. She notices that it has somehow altered to a darker shade, then sees the small pool of maroon that surrounds it.

 _Of course._

"Where are the others?"

Was that her voice? It sounded small but steady. Is that even possible? No one answers.

"Dead, Granger." He shifts uneasily at her questioning stare. "You killed them all."

" _I love you, Harry Potter," you whisper, watching him intently, but he is asleep and you are awake, because the voices just don't stop. You delicately touch his cheek and continue, "but what is there of me for you to love?"_

She props her chin on her hand, gazes at Ron's flinching fingers as the spear that cut through his head still hasn't completed its task to reach his decline. "Is that so?" She says facetiously.

His eyes are grave, but he smiles anyway. It comes out a grimace. "Yes."

"Good." A speck of ash tickles the surface of her nose.

"So what now?" He asks.

A grin. A manic glint.

"Let's burn this place down."


	3. token

_She grasped the trailing fingers of Harry Potter from her body, ceasing his intents. They lay uninterrupted on her bed as he traced imperceptible outlines down her spine, prompting her to arch her body towards his as she fluttered her eyes close, absorbing their close proximity. He shifted beside her, his arm stayed encircled around her petite body, pulling her closer and only permitting a very minute gap between them._

" _I love you." His voice is a murmur in her ears and she nods.  
_

* * *

She opens her eyes.

A repressed gasp absconds from her throat and she shoots up from the bed, releasing the sheet that conceals her unclothed body. Quickly, she glances at his silvery, blond hair. With his back turned from her, he is not able to see her current shape. Wide eyed and alarmed, she buries her hands in her hair, taking no notice of the sweat that falls down her back, and cries.

 _She snatches the broken wand from the indecent ground – the wand that she had removed from the red headed boy as he trembled between the falling castle's corners._

 _His blue eyes, which are like Ron's, halt her from her escape. She wishes that she can do something moral before she loses her saintliness. Before she turns into the distraught soul a part of her knows she'll become._

 _A glance at the young boy's state, she immediately glowers. A shake of the head in disappointment, he fails to show the bravery that was supposed to be shining in his eyes, the stance of defence absent._

 _Not Ron, he's not Ron._

 _She blinks away the simulacrum of his alleged, cause of death – blinks away the opposed spell that she'd unintentionally hit at the knights that were supposed to be on_ their _side._

 _Forget the sharp spear that flew in the air, the terrible cries of dismay._

 _She looks at his green and silver tie, glowers, before the ropes she roused submerged his horrified screams, and she lopes into the hopeless battlefield._

She understands that he does not like it when she is like this. When she is recalling and lamenting the memories that should have continued to happen, but were not able to. She knows that he hates it when she cries out His name in the darkness of his room, when the fire of the candle drops, creating more shadows of their precedent. She knows that he dislikes her presence more than anything else, for she is the proof of his past, the reason of his exile, and the cause of his adversity.

And maybe that's why she comes back to him every time; to settle up her debt, to return the favour of sharing a lifetime of being an outsider to the world they allegedly belong to.

Carefully, she pushes the sheet from her body and rises to her feet. She retrieves the clothes she wore yesterday and redresses soundlessly. Then, she grabs her tattered bag from the floor, fishing out a cigarette.

She breathes in the taste of poison in her tongue. Relishing the feeling of calm, she closes her eyes and heads to a nearby window. The glass is stained and dusty, but she does not mind, disregards the blemish and focuses on the pregnant Luna that fills the murky midnight with light. She takes a drag and closes her eyes, remembering the feeling of Him and the feeling of the other.

He is still asleep, she perceives, noting the steady rise and fall of his shoulders and the relaxed contractions of his back muscles. She sighs and her breath is smoke and sadness in the nocturnal atmosphere. The recollection of what could have been – of what _should have been_ remains imprinted in her head as she takes another puff, winks at the remembrance, and ignores the hollow feeling in her chest. The hole that maintains to grow abysmal and unfilled and she does not care.

She marvels the possibility of seeing Him again. She sees herself wearing white inside a coffin with flowers covering the casket and sees her mum and dad with the light of recognition and tears in their eyes. She sees the Weasley family mourning and the ghost of Ron and Fred beside them, smiling at her with open arms. She sees Draco Malfoy at the farthest position from her tomb as he eyed the cerulean box of cigarettes that they shared together with acknowledgement, and beams at him. Then she sees Him and she frowns.

His bright green eyes are barren as he looks at her. Unlike Ron and Fred's warm welcome to the afterlife, he is grimacing at her presence, shaking his head disapprovingly, and then says, _"You don't belong here."_

 _Close._

 _Open._

 _Close._

She opens her eyes and momentarily forgets how to breathe, chokes on the smoke, dropping the coffin nail from her hands. Gasping and coughing, she stomps on the cigarette, extinguishing the smoulder and scattering the contents with her foot.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

He sits up from the bed, removes the sheet from his body, displaying his member. She turns away, refuses to look, though she has seen it already and a few hours ago before they collapsed together from exhaustion of him inside her, and her nails scratching his back, leaving more marks on his body as they fucked.

The rush of revulsion hastily becomes pronounced on her face and she made sure that he is clothed below before reaching to look at his eyes. He only gave her a blank expression at her mien of repugnance, sending her an eye roll formerly, and then putting on his white shirt.

He walks toward her, points at the ashes on the floor. "Your mess, you clean."

The tone of his voice is intimidating, but she refuses to be cowed. "Speak for yourself," she says purposely, "Your house, your filth."

They stare at each other passionately, the past alive around them, the mistakes they made together, and she chooses to break their gaze by grabbing her purse and heading to the exit of his room.


	4. naïve

He swears to whatever being in the heavens that he has never felt relief as strong as he does now the moment she returns.

He had been staring at his window ever since she left him that night, occasionally stepping outside his dilapidated house, and then heading back to the murk of his household, as if doing so would change her mind and she would come back to his arms. He would have held her tight, and most probably never let her go. She would breathe against him, he would feel her respirations through his shirt and he would suppress an involuntary shudder. The unwanted, evident twitch of his muscles she would sense and she would smile a small smile. Although, it would never be seen by him, but he would know that she was offering a miniscule piece of appreciation for his company.

But, alas, she did not come back and he never got to feel anything but the frost of her existence.

He had always expected her absence after they touched and he had memorized the art of her form – he always had. He never really thought much about it during their first encounter, but her visits have become repeated and it led him to that 3'o clock over-thinking the muggles say. Ever since then, he wondered what goes through her head when she bites her lip, strangling the moan that builds skyscrapers of the sound in her throat. Does she think about him when she throws her head back in ecstasy – that accurate amount of euphoria he gives her? Does she cover up the numerous love bites he gives when she exposes her neck to him as he grinded his hips with hers with muggle make-up concealers or does she hide them with magic? Does she expose them to the eyes of the world?

He would close his eyes then, remembering the hard truth.

She is always the first one to leave. After their coming apart and ceasing shudders, he would pretend to fall asleep and he had always wondered if she does too. He would turn to his side of the bed, his back against her, and he knows she would not move until she hears his laboured breathing come to a halt. Then she would stand, gather her things. He would hear the shuffling of their carelessly strewn clothes on the floor, the sound of denim on skin as she slid her legs into it, and then the accustomed sigh. He always thought it was directed at him, that sigh and his deliberation constantly vacillates between confusion and remorse; confusion because he really isn't certain what she wants, and regret because he has no knowledge of her sincere desires.

He knows that her heart belongs to someone else, and whatever they currently have is merely a moment that is passing by. He knows it will soon end, just like everything else in his life: his magic, his parents, and his name. It is only a matter of time before they take her away from him too.

He never knew who 'they' were.

She is stepping out of her car when he throws the front door open. He does not even bother covering up the red scratches on his forearms, the dark circles under his eyes. They are mere scars on his body, and he already has too many marks on his skin that the wounds his nails would give no longer bothered him anymore.

The look on her face shows her genuine surprise to see him already outside, but it is quickly replaced by her indifference and he suddenly knows that something has shifted. The quirk of her lip downwards, the inescapable fear that shines when she glances at him, and the subtle quaking of her body tell him so.

The silence blankets the atmosphere almost immediately. The instant her mouth fastens and her outbreath is only what is left of the memory of the word she would have uttered, she looks away from him. In front of her, she presses her fingers together, cracks them quietly. Her voluminous hair hides her face from his scrutiny. The pierce of his regard grows in curiosity and she does not see it.

He knows she does.

"Granger," he mutters.

She purses her lips, looks at him with the pretence of unconcern, "Malfoy."

The stillness of it all screams in frustration. The ambiance slowly drifts to slumber, whispering sweet nothings to its lonesome self, and they are both unaware of the chaos the Fates' insight whispers in their ears.

A flash of impatience briefly mars his face. He crosses his arms over his chest. "What are you doing here?"

"To be frank," she says, hesitant. She meets his eyes. "I don't know."

He doesn't know why his face suddenly grows hot, why his fingers have curled to form fists that look as hard as they are in impact. He is not sure if he should grab her shoulders and shake her, questioning her words, analyzing every letter if only to discover another layer of secrecy behind the first; or if he must endure the searing anger that sets his veins ablaze, if only to let the piece in his heart rest as it had burned and turned into black, crimpled up as the smoulder lingered.

"Then why are you in my property?" He asks calculatingly and she scoffs. "If you don't know what you came for, you might as well appa – get out of here."

She shifts her stance. "And then Ron said I was a bossy know-it-all." His eyes widen. She rolls her eyes. "To think I'm not actually the only one," she gasps dramatically, pressing her hand on her chest. "I'm affronted, Malfoy," she drops her hand and crosses her arms in front of her, "by you of all people."

"It worked out before, you know," he tells her intentionally, overlooking the slight. "I'd provoke you; call you names that are considered blasphemy in your circle –" he waves his hand. "You'd condemn me with your long line of offenses and I'd ridicule you again," he pauses, wavers. "We were like that."

The hesitation returns in her voice and she sounds like she is strangled. "Yeah," she directs her gaze to the weeds that stuck out in between the slim slits of the timber entryway. "We were."

"Tell me, Granger," he says. The urging edge of his voice made her glance up and redirect her attention to him, and he buries the satisfaction of seeing the alighting curiosity and unveiled suspicion in her eyes. "What's changed?"

Eyes narrowing pre-emptively, she merely thins her lips, tying her tongue simply to readdress the question with the attempted ineffable silence.

But Draco was having none of the reserve. The absence of noise was beginning to damage his ears with its loud, perpetual ringing, and he's opted that he has had enough. The need to know the truth that lies in the bed of her tongue and the shrill of her voice, he decided, must be let out. He knows that there is a reason behind her stays – which he decided was undying and continual. The candour simply inhabits the inside her mind, and it is loyal of its territory.

Her response of stillness wants him to forcefully grab his hair and rip them off of his scalp, but he holds himself, prays to whatever divinity in the sky that he steadies the persistent instability of his emotions, wishes that he will not do anything rash like pushing her away, analogous to what has happened previously.

If only she would remove the walls she'd built, forget Potter and Weasley who are too dead and deeply buried somewhere immoral by the Dark Lord's toadies. If only she would turn her back on the world, and give him a chance.

"Granger," he prods, straining at the leash, "what happened after we turned everything into nothing but residue?"

 _What happened after the blood of many dried up on your hands and you only smiled at me with your red-rimmed teeth? What happened when the fire danced on your fingers, you had no wand and you've done nothing but look at your hands and it was suddenly there_? _Why can't we no longer do magic? Why am I here instead of Malfoy manor? Why are you sad and cold all the time? What's_ changed?"

She is still looking at him with wide eyes. "I don't know."

"You're lying."

"No, I am _not –"_

"Yes, you _are_." He cuts her off sharply, glaring daggers at her stoic expression. "Everything you are, right now is a fucking pretense," he hisses. "You can fool Potter, The fucking Order, or the Dark Lord into thinking that you're nothing but stone, but you _can't_ fool me."

She is rigid, but her face remains uncharacteristically distant and he does not point it out, for maybe it might be part of her act. "I'm not fooling anyone, Malfoy," she answers primly, almost haughtily, and to think that he's had the more potent reputation. "The only fool here is you."

"How _dare_ you –"

"Look around you, Malfoy," she says ominously. "I am the only person who knows of your existence, and you are the only individual who knows of mine." At his looming expression and hardened fists, with a nefarious mien, she covertly continues, "We are dead to the Wizarding world, and it is better this way."

The remark lights his heart with wrath, he quivers as he speaks. "You don't have the right to manipulate my life, Granger!"

"And your parents could?" she retorts with a snort, as if she found the declaration of his liberty disputable. He momentarily falters, and he realizes that she has the upper hand. "Don't be more asinine as I think you are, Malfoy," she carries on. "You were manipulated by your parents' ideals into thinking that you are above us all; a Black and a Malfoy, affluent – which permitted you provision of anything you _desired."_ She smiles at him and he thinks that it looks improper with her darkened expression. "Ah, yes, and don't forget the blood line."

She steps forward, growing closer to his body. "Tell me, Draco," she begins the subject as if it is confidential, and perhaps it is, he thinks, for the way her eyes grow more surreptitious and malicious makes him swallow the lump of something he can't identify down his oesophagus, and wish for air. They are so close and the only space left is the area between his chest and hers. Her hand travels from his hair and her fingers trace his jaw. She touches him with a gentleness he didn't think she would have. It was as if his skin might break like glass if she pressed too hard. Her eyes look right through him; pierce his soul with an arrow drenched in poison. "Does having blood as pure as innocence, make you –" she tilts her head, a morbid smile on her lips "- unsullied?"

He does not answer.

"Tell me, lovely, virtuous Draco," she grisly laughed. "Don't give me the silent treatment. You didn't give me that the last time I was here."

He stands by his choice. He refuses to answer. The beautiful witch in front of him may bribe him with her intimidating tactic and truth, but he will not answer. What is left of his pride will not waver.

"I asked first, Granger," he fires. "You gave me the silent treatment first; I'm not exempted from it either."

She takes a step back, allowing the wide space between them to return, filling it with calm air. Her hands are raised in front of her in mock submission. "Touché."

"You might as well answer it," he decides, thinking. "Answer my question, and I'll answer yours."

The smile from her face hastily disappears, and the façade of stoic apathy reappears. He ignores it.

"What's changed, Granger?" he asks again, his heart filling with an unidentifiable emotion.

He can feel the hope that blankets the atmosphere. He sees the picture of her smile of genuine happiness in his head and he catches it in his hand. He holds it dear, and she is there next to him, and he smells her fragrance and it is wonderful.

But her lour is back and her eyes are unmoving.

"I don't know, Malfoy."


End file.
